Yes, Greek culture has many different kinds of love, and most of them are non-sexual. Example--"agape," the spiritual love one would have of a mentor or god... Here are the four types: Eros, Storge, Philia, Agape. Some of these involve sex, some don't, many have it optional, loads don't give a crap about gender or try to break things down into "orientations" (if you've got Eros for girls only but your Philia has a side of gay intercrural sex once in a while as part of sealing your brotherly bond, what do you call it?).
And, well, Truean, breaking people down into bi, straight, gay only trisects the spectrum of sexual orientation, rather than leaving us with an understanding of "mostly straight," "mostly gay," whatever. I'll continue to say that I'm "intellectualsexual," by which I really mean (I guess) that I feel lots and lots of Agape and Philia for teacher figures, but not that much on the Eros scale for anyone. There's a really huge range of experiences.
Damn, I think Vector may have blown my mind. 
I don't... hum.... [thinks about this for a while]. I guess I could make the argument that the whole idea of gay/bi/straight only applies to eros and that "phila" that involves any form of sex crosses over into eros.... I believe I might make this argument reasonably....
Then again I am confronted with the fact that I really might not understand this enough to fully comprehend the ramifications of what this means.... My lack of understanding saddens me.... [sigh]
Actually, thank you for posting this Vector:
http://www.questioningtransphobia.com/?p=3865.
It is incredibly confusing to me, but perhaps this is a good thing. My entire worldview is all about categories, and the law is too. You can't be "sorta guilty." Or "Kinda innocent," because the system couldn't work that way. You might not be guilty of crime A but rather the lesser included crime of B or no crime at all.... Categories... all over the place....
Same thing with my view of gender.... I just can't really fit as a male at all and I've truly tried, crying when I failed.... I can do so only as a lie with a ton of conscious effort to maintain said lie, but only as a fraud. The notion of a "non-binary" sex/gender is specifically troubling for me, because I only feel ok when I drop the lie and let myself be female.... This is even moreso true with intersex individuals, who may be born with both ... [ahem] "indications" and organs of males and females. These poor individuals have what must be an immensely difficult time in life.
One of my undergrad majors was psych (the other economics) and I trained under the DSM IV TR (A physician's desk reference manual for psychological clinical conditions). I pretty much fit GID (Gender Identity Disorder) dead on and I've had two therapists say so.... [I can't currently do jack about it but that's a different issue]. This article doesn't mesh with that at all.... I'm not sure what to think about that.
Trans = "Mismatch" of gender/sex instead of "not normal?" I do Identify as a Transwoman and the "trans" to the therapists I've talked too tends to mean having your inward gender not match your outward sexual appearance. The "trans" seems to refer to the condition, or the "mismatch" and I've heard some say that after you transition, you are a "woman," and no longer "trans," except for purposes of disclosure to potential partners. It was basically the "Mismatch" between your gender and your sex, rather than necessarily "not normal."
What the heck I am:People and their terminology confuse the heck out of me. I've been called gay, because of the whole liking men thing. I've been called a "straight woman" because the logic goes, I'm transsexual and a woman who likes men and thus straight?
I dunno. This is conflicting with a lot of what I was taught and found some comfort in. Clearly, my comfort or lack thereof does not determine the validity of something....[thinks for a long time]
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Topic: Chill and Relaxed Progressive Irritation and Annoyance Thread (Read 870597 times)